No amount of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
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In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
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Have a happy surprise today.
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Showing posts with label Waiting For Godot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Waiting For Godot. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Gibbering Greatness 2/14/09
Only exceptionally rational men can afford to be absurd.
Allan Goldfein
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Happy heart-on-your-sleeve day.
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I came of age as an actor at the same time the Theatre of the Absurd. Although the movement began at the end of the Second World War, it didn't hit the major stages of the world until the late 50s and 60s. The major "absurdist" writers who crossed my path then were Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Fernando Arabal and Herold Pinter. There are many others.
The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was pasted on them by a writer named Martin Esslin, a Hungarian/American author who wrote a book with that title. The "absurdist" writing arose out of an existential philosophy, notably that of Albert Camus, that looked at what appeared to be a senseless, hopeless life and tried to explain it, or at least find a place in it. And as with any important revolutionary movement in art, there has been more criticism written about it than there are plays.
The plays are a tearing apart of situations, places, language, characters and relationships, but that doesn't make them depressing or nihilistic. In fact many of the plays have almost a vaudevillian quality to them. For us in the theatre they were a joy to find and experience simply because "common sense," the rules of human behavior and rituals of conduct were thrown out. Characters did not behave in a rational way, nor was their world a rational environment. But throughout them there was the intellect working to redefine existence and establish new myths in order to make life comfortable in an uncomfortable, atom bomb world.
The great masterpiece of the time is Sameul Beckett's play "Waiting For Godot" which appeared on Broadway with Bert Lahr and E. G. Marshall. Audiences and critics didn't understand it. It was also performed at San Quentin prison. The prisoners understood it completely. Someone suggested that maybe the New York drama critics should spend some time in prison, which might not be a bad idea on several levels.
I had the great pleasure of performing one of the roles in "Godot" a few years ago and even at that late date people were still unable to grasp what the play was about: it has no boy-meets-girl, no detective solving a crime, no domestic drama. It's a play in which nothing happens but everything happens. To understand it one needs a sense of humor, a sense of the absurd..
Last Thanksgiving evening I was here alone with a stove/oven that didn't work, I had a stack of canned food to eat and, behold, my can opener broke. My Thanksgiving dinner was bread, peanut butter and bananas. That was theatre of the absurd, and if you don't think that was funny you've got no sense of humor.
The Vagabond Journeys
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Someone is thinking good thoughts about you right now. Think back.
Allan Goldfein
*************************
Happy heart-on-your-sleeve day.
-----------------------------------
I came of age as an actor at the same time the Theatre of the Absurd. Although the movement began at the end of the Second World War, it didn't hit the major stages of the world until the late 50s and 60s. The major "absurdist" writers who crossed my path then were Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Fernando Arabal and Herold Pinter. There are many others.
The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was pasted on them by a writer named Martin Esslin, a Hungarian/American author who wrote a book with that title. The "absurdist" writing arose out of an existential philosophy, notably that of Albert Camus, that looked at what appeared to be a senseless, hopeless life and tried to explain it, or at least find a place in it. And as with any important revolutionary movement in art, there has been more criticism written about it than there are plays.
The plays are a tearing apart of situations, places, language, characters and relationships, but that doesn't make them depressing or nihilistic. In fact many of the plays have almost a vaudevillian quality to them. For us in the theatre they were a joy to find and experience simply because "common sense," the rules of human behavior and rituals of conduct were thrown out. Characters did not behave in a rational way, nor was their world a rational environment. But throughout them there was the intellect working to redefine existence and establish new myths in order to make life comfortable in an uncomfortable, atom bomb world.
The great masterpiece of the time is Sameul Beckett's play "Waiting For Godot" which appeared on Broadway with Bert Lahr and E. G. Marshall. Audiences and critics didn't understand it. It was also performed at San Quentin prison. The prisoners understood it completely. Someone suggested that maybe the New York drama critics should spend some time in prison, which might not be a bad idea on several levels.
I had the great pleasure of performing one of the roles in "Godot" a few years ago and even at that late date people were still unable to grasp what the play was about: it has no boy-meets-girl, no detective solving a crime, no domestic drama. It's a play in which nothing happens but everything happens. To understand it one needs a sense of humor, a sense of the absurd..
Last Thanksgiving evening I was here alone with a stove/oven that didn't work, I had a stack of canned food to eat and, behold, my can opener broke. My Thanksgiving dinner was bread, peanut butter and bananas. That was theatre of the absurd, and if you don't think that was funny you've got no sense of humor.
The Vagabond Journeys
--------------------------------------------
Someone is thinking good thoughts about you right now. Think back.
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